How can marketers satisfy this unquenchable desire for new content? One technology that helps tackle the need for developing and delivering a constant stream of personalized content to customers is natural language generation (NLG).

News Item

If you're an early adopter who has been lamenting his poor eyesight, and blaming your spectacles for holding you back from using Google Glass, then you will be glad to hear Rochester Optical may have a solution for you. The company is offering a prescription lens option for the latest in wearable mobile technology. The lenses will start at $99.

Did you miss your chance to grab up Facebook shares during its initial public offering - or during the stock dump that happened shortly after? Well, you may have another chance...sort of. Facebook, Inc. announced that it is commencing an underwritten registered public offering of 70,000,000 shares of its Class A common stock. Gigom estimates this to be valued at approximately $3.9 billion.

Brill and Semantico announced the launch of BrillOnline Discovery, which offers users the option to search across all of Brill's online resources from one place. BrillOnline Discovery uses the Scolaris Linking Hub technology developed by Semantico. This enables federated search across the family of Brill platforms.

Amazon Studios, the original film and series production arm of Amazon.com, announced Amazon Storybuilder. Based on the practice of outlining a screenplay with paper notecards, Amazon Storybuilder takes notecarding and makes it digital, giving screenwriters the ability to lay out digital notecards on a virtual corkboard. Users can access their projects whenever and wherever on their computer, tablet, or smartphone.

You may have noticed that videos are playing a bigger role in your Facebook newsfeed since September. That's because the social media giant was trying to make the video experience more engaging. The company says it has worked, and so now it is testing video ads. According to Facebook's blog post, "Marketers will be able to use this new format to tell their stories to a large number of people on Facebook in a short amount of time - with high-quality sight, sound and motion."

Brill and Semantico announced BrillOnline Primary Sources - Brill's new online platform for primary sources. The platform consists of thematic collections of unique materials such as rare books and documents from around the world. These essential research tools in the area of humanities and social sciences are an integrated part of Brill's product portfolio.

Scope e-Knowledge Center (Scope), a provider of content enhancement and knowledge services, announced the release of its ConSCIse 1.4, the latest version of the company's abstracting and metadata enrichment platform. The new ConSCIse version 1.4 focuses on delivering highly accurate descriptive metadata such as abstracts, keywords, and subject terms to support enhanced discoverability and more accurate levels of contextual relevancy.

Loop, a smartphone-enabled commerce solution accepted at more than 50 million point-of-sale terminals worldwide, announced it has secured more than $10 million in funding and will start shipping its mobile app and its first AppCessory, the Loop Fob, to its Kickstarter backers this month.

Many social networks just ignore the protestations of their users when changes to the layout or privacy settings enrage the masses. But when Twitter decided to change its block feature, the outcry from users was heard, and quickly responded to. The change would keep a user from seeing the activity of a user they had blocked -- but would not keep the blocked user from seeing the activity of the person who had blocked them.

Instagram co-foudner Kevin Systrom announced the photo-sharing app's newest feature, Instagram Direct. In a move to compete with popular services like Snapchat, Instagram will allow users to send photos directly to another user -- or a group of up to 15 users.

Data Conversion Laboratory (DCL) announced it has entered into a co-operative agreement with the Library of Congress (LOC) to act as an agent for deposit of eSerials on behalf of publishers to fulfill mandatory deposit demands and deposits in support of copyright registration at the U.S. Copyright Office and Library of Congress. This agreement follows a Request for Information about Normalized Electronic Serial Content issued by LOC in April 2012, and subsequent public notice of invitation for third parties to act as agents for deposit.

Even cord cutters needed the modern equivalent of bunny ears if they wanted to get live news on their television, but a deal between Bloomberg News and Apple TV may be changing that. According to Gigaom, Bloomberg launched an app on Apple TV on December 11, that provides a live feed of financial news and on-demand content.

Joomla, an open source content management systems (CMS), announced the immediate availability of the Joomla Framework. This new initiative enables developers to more easily combine features from the Joomla Framework with features from other open source frameworks as they custom-build their own app or CMS.

The Financial Times is extending its content matching service FT Smart Match to global advertising clients after a successful initial trial. The technology, provided by Smartology, recognizes the meaning of news articles, allowing advertisers to match their content to relevant news stories in real time.

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., announced the trial of an enhanced system of peer review, which will allow for the transfer of reviewer comments between journals. Peer review is an integral part of scientific publishing and the new pilot is being tested in selected neuroscience journals.

RSuite CMS, a content management system for publishers, is now powered by MarkLogic 7, the Enterprise NoSQL database. RSuite CMS 4 provides an entirely new user experience through an intuitive user interface that minimizes actions required to execute complex searches across an entire set of content, globally apply metadata, dynamically organize content into collections, package and distribute content to licensing partners, and much more.

SDL, a provider of customer experience management, and North Plains Systems, announced a global strategic alliance aimed at helping organizations do a more effective job of driving digital customer experiences using rich media. Under the agreement, SDL will resell North Plains' technology with its Web Content Management (WCM) platform, SDL Tridion. The companies will also work together to develop joint sales and marketing initiatives.

Searchmetrics has introduced a working search analytics solution to fill the knowledge gap created by Google's expansion of secure search which has left digital marketers and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) professionals unable to track which keywords are driving traffic to individual web pages from organic searches. The company's new Traffic Insight feature provides an analysis of the top keywords that drive traffic to specific landing pages, including the specific traffic data for each of those keywords.

Brainshark, Inc., a provider of cloud-based business presentations, announced the availability of an online assessment tool to help companies evaluate their sales content effectiveness. The purpose of the assessment - made available for free by both Brainshark and Profitable Channels, a provider of sales enablement consulting - is to help sales and marketing professionals understand how well their content is driving sales performance and to identify steps to maximize the return on their content investments.

Amazon Publishing announced the launch of StoryFront, a new imprint offering short fiction across genres and home of the digital literary journal Day One, a weekly publication dedicated to short fiction and poetry from emerging writers.

blinkx plc, an internet media platform that connects audiences with brands through professionally generated content, announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Rhythm NewMedia Inc. Rhythm, a premium mobile video advertising technology platform focused exclusively on smartphones and tablets, for a total consideration of $65.0 million.

The Internet of Things is already here, though we aren't all plugged in just yet. But in the "Have You Talked to Your Refrigerator Today?" session at the Gilbane Conference in Boston, attendees were treated to a plethora of fun -- and mostly useful -- examples of the way the Internet of Things is coming to life.

One of the main themes that emerged at the 2013 Gilbane Conference was the need to create content that can easily feed multiple channels, but while many content creators know they need to create more agile content, they aren't quite sure how to do it with the tools they already have. So one session asked "How should your CMS Fit Into Your Mobile Strategy?"

The last time you picked a new CMS did you hear this sentence uttered: "I can use that, it's just like Word!" Well, if you picked your CMS based on that usability, somewhere there is a content strategist who is very mad at you. According to Acquia's Tom Wentworth, who spoke in the "How to Make Authors and Content Strategists Happy and Content Creation Efficient" at the Gilbane Conference, content strategists are often at odds with CMS vendors and their users.

Regular Gilbane Conference attendees will know that the first day keynotes set the stage for the rest of the conference. If the 2013 keynotes are any indication, attendees can expect to be hearing a lot about context this year. As Meghan Walsh, senior director, e-commerce platform system management at Marriott International, put it, "Content is King but distribution is queen, and she wears the pants."

AllCast is an app allows Android users to stream content from their mobile devices to video game consoles, set-top boxes, and connected TVs, and it just made its debut in beta. Basically, it's like AirPlay for Android, as Gigaom pointed out.

Topsy has been keeping an archive of all the tweets ever tweeted since the 2006 launch of Twitter -- and now Apple has bought the company for over $200 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. With the acquisition, Apple will have access to the constant stream of real-time data being created by Twitter users.

DoubleSpring, a Bangalore-based web and mobile development company announced the release of Blackmonk 3.0. BlackMonk is an online publishing solution that helps users create, manage and monetize portals, magazines, newspapers, business directories, or online communities.

Mocana, an app security provider, announced it has entered into a worldwide reseller agreement with Unisys Corporation to offer Mocana Mobile Application Protection (MAP) as part of the new Unisys Stealth for Mobile solution to help protect enterprises from mobile cyber threats.

Qumu, an enterprise video platform provider, announced the newest version of its Video Control Center platform solution for the enterprise. Updates include user-friendly webcasting, improved mobile browsing and a new player interface.

Chill.com will shut down its service on December 15, disappointing cord-cutters everywhere. Originally a social discovery service for video, Chill eventually started selling DRM-free video content, including original programming. That move didn't pay off.

Globalization Partners International (GPI), a provider of comprehensive document, software, and website translation services announced that it has launched an ebook translation and desktop publishing service. The new service will allow ebook publishers and companies that have developed ebooks to get them translated and correctly formatted for a variety of ebook formats including ePub and KF8.

MediaFire, an online storage and collaboration provider, announced the launch of the Public Beta of MediaFire Desktop, a free application for OSX and Windows that enables users to instantly upload, collaborate, and share their media in the cloud, directly from their desktop. Designed to complement MediaFire's online storage service, MediaFire Desktop keeps your online and locally stored files safe and in sync.

OverDrive, a supplier of ebooks, audiobooks, music, and video to libraries and schools, announced that the Streaming Video lending service has launched in its first pilot at Los Angeles Public Library. While LAPL is the first to offer the service, OverDrive is preparing to roll it out to their entire network, expanding to additional markets in North America and worldwide.

Lightt, a mobile video creation and sharing platform for the iPhone and iPad, introduced Lightt 3.0. Selected by the App Store as one of its Best New Apps, Lightt 3.0 allows you to create continuous video timelines, synchronize music, and tap into a rich palette of features and effects in the moment with a touch of your screen or a shake of your phone.

If you doubted Andrew Sullivan's decision to leave the Daily Beast and make The Dish a reader-supported venture, you may be eating your words. Having raised over $800,000, Sullivan launched a subscription only magazine called Deep Dish. As of Monday, November 18, 2013, readers can subscribe to the monthly magazinewhich features long-form journalism.

The Financial Times has launched a new "gift article" feature for subscribers which simplifies the sharing of articles with their networks. At launch, the service allows FT subscribers to share up to 10 articles per month through email to non-subscribers.

XTM International, a provider of web-based translation technology, has released XTM Version 8.0. Incorporating many features requested by its users, Version 8.0 provides customers with an even more powerful computer aided translation (CAT) tool and translation management system (TMS).

Amazon announced that Fire OS 3.1, a free software update for the new Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Fire HDX, is now available. This free, over-the-air update will be delivered automatically in the coming weeks, or you can visit amazon.com/kindlesoftwareupdates to download and install the update.

Random House LLC, a U.S. division of Penguin Random House, announced a partnership with Pinterest to use the service's first set of APIs to help people discover popular content. Random House is among a select group of multi-industry companies to work with the Pinterest community to power a new type of discovery experience.

SimpleFeed announced the Social Syndication Hub, a predictive publishing service that automatically determines what content companies should publish, where they should publish it, and what day and time they should publish to get optimal results. With the Social Syndication Hub, companies can benefit from algorithms that distribute content to ideal channels based on type, keywords, and categories -- as well as measure and analyze content and channel effectiveness.

Ebyline.com, a platform that links brands and publishers with experienced freelance journalists, announced the release of Ebyline Payments for WordPress, a plugin for the popular publishing platform that allows anyone to pay their blog contributors or editors with the click of a button.

MarkLogic Corporation, an Enterprise NoSQL database platform company, announced the immediate availability of MarkLogic 7 on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace. Enterprises now have full access to the company's schema-agnostic Enterprise NoSQL database that includes search and application services and is engineered to harness the benefits of AWS.

Curated video news is coming to Roku via AOL On, according to GigaOm. Within the next few weeks, a software update will bring a news home screen to most devices. The content for the channel will be provided exclusively by the AOL On platform, but the partnership is not without its critics.

OneSpot, a content advertising company that combines content marketing with online advertising, announced it has completed a $5.3 million Series A round of financing. Mohr Davidow Ventures led the investment round with participation from existing and new investors Mack Capital, RSL Ventures, Capital Factory, and Bazaarvoice co-founder Brett Hurt. The investment brings OneSpot's total funding to $6.8 million and will help the company aggressively expand its sales and marketing efforts, as well as broaden and accelerate product development.